The present invention relates generally to managing a metering infrastructure, and more particularly for managing and controlling devices in a metering infrastructure using deployed smart cards.
Large scale smart infrastructures may incorporate a large number of smart devices. One such example is an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which refers to systems that measure, collect and analyze energy usage, and interact with advanced devices such as electricity meters, gas meters, heat meters, cable meters and water meters, through various communication media either on request (on-demand) or on pre-defined schedules. These infrastructures include hardware, software, communications, consumer energy displays and controllers, customer associated systems, Meter Data Management (MDM) software, supplier and network distribution business systems, etc.
A typical AMI may include a significant number of smart devices (e.g., meters, supervisory control and data acquisition “SCADA” devices, routers, etc.) having advanced (i.e., “smart”) functional capabilities implemented with some type of computational system. Because many of these devices are heterogeneous in nature, providing different functions, being manufactured by different suppliers, etc., implementing and managing the devices within such an infrastructure poses a significant challenge.